Well, I just returned from the grocery store, and I don't think I have ever bought so many vegetables, fruits and nuts in one go.
Do you ever get 'shopping cart pride'? When your shopping cart is loaded up with good healthy food, and you're struttin' down those aisles pretending like these are your "normal" groceries?
And you swear you can see furtive glances from other shoppers as they put down their cola, chips and cookies on the belt after they checked out your healthy haul?

I felt like a complete poser.

Oh, I wanted my shopping cart of godly healthiness to be something I do "every other week", but instead I felt like I was carrying around a knock-off Prada insisting it was real.
These people weren't seeing my previous purchases of buttery crackers, goldfish crackers, ice cream, 2 liter bottle of pop, chocolate and a bag of chips.
So kept my head down and continued with my little shopping session.

I also had the revelation that when you cut out the crap from your diet, you only basically need one aisle and two sections to shop in:
- The Butcher section
- Fruit and Veg section
- The milk/cheese/egg aisle

This really cut down on my shopping time and I was a little amazed to be walking past whole aisles where I just knew there was nothing down there I could eat.

How can we have such a large store and so little actual food? I wondered.

After replacing the box of raspberries my two year had ejected from the shopping cart, and having wiped up the mess with bum wipes, while looking around to see if anyone noticed me stash the mess of what was now raspberry jam and wipes on a chip shelf, I paid for my 800lbs of food and hefted it all to the car.

Finally I got to my next stop.

I was there for only three things:
- Coconut flour
- Macadamia nuts
- Unsweetened coconut

Ella was accepting the fact that she was going to be in yet another buggy, and was helping by pulling anything within arm's reach off the shelf, while I asked a young gentleman where the Coconut flour was.
He pointed it out to me, then did was I was so horrible dreading.....tried to make conversation.

"So what is coconut flour for? Can you just, like, replace it for regular flour?"

I stared at him for a moment, I opened my mouth and was appalled to realize that I was completely bullshitting my way through my answer!

"Oh, well, it's better for you because it's gluten free, and you can use it in most things. But not everything...like cakes."

What the hell...
Why would I say cakes? Why on earth would it work for everything BUT cakes? The complete truth was that I saw a recipe for Paleo Pancakes that called for coconut flour, so here I was buying the freaking flour! I have 0 idea of it's nutritive power or it's ability to makes cakes rise.

As quickly as I could I hauled ass out of there and finally made it home.

Remi greeted me at the door and helped me carry the bags in.

"Holy crap, that's a lot of fruit." He sounded stunned.

I ignored him, and started washing and re-bagging the fruit.

Remi has been irritable the last few days as he's going through his wheat withdrawal, so I was trying to be particularly patient.

Jendara... I know exactly what your talking about when it comes to shopping cart pride. It makes me proud to walk up to the checkout with all my veggies, meat, and almond milk! Such a change from how I used to shop. I almost feel kind of snobby though looking at others pushing around all that JUNK I used to call food.

Jendara... I know exactly what your talking about when it comes to shopping cart pride. It makes me proud to walk up to the checkout with all my veggies, meat, and almond milk! Such a change from how I used to shop. I almost feel kind of snobby though looking at others pushing around all that JUNK I used to call food.

Oh yeah, I definitely get that snobby feeling, but I know that I'm just as likely to mess up or slip up again, and be pulled towards the nearest bag of Reese Peanut Butter cups only to eat them 'pig in a trough' style.
So I try not to judge too much.
But I figure, at least I'm trying to be healthy, so that's got to count for something!

I like to grow things.
Particularly fungus, and more specifically fungus in old food containers in the back of my fridge.
I hear people complaining about how they've got 'black thumbs', and I just can't relate to that.
Crap grows in my my fridge all the time, and I don't even have to try!
Just throw the container in there, forget about it for a month, and I've grown the fucking garden of eden back there.

That was pretty normal for me, as until now there's never been that pull to use all the fresh veg or fruits I would buy in a fit of crap-eating guilt.
I thought maybe if I showed my devotion by buying the food, and letting it rot in my fridge, the god of healthy living and wash-board abs would look upon me in favour.
(Of course then I'd try to hide my bag of M&M's under my sacrificial offering, so the other shoppers wouldn't see it.)

I opened a container of god-knows-what today, and turned to Remi: “Aww look how fuzzy it is!!” I shoved the container under his nose.

“That is disgusting” He gaged, trying to get away.

“No! Look! It's blue! And it's smiling at us!!”

He quickly vacated the kitchen lest I find any other 'adorable' mold, while I continued to scrape it all into the rubbish bin.

I did pretty good though today, I made the mancub a healthy paleo lunch, which consisted of a hardboiled egg, berries, cheese, raisins and a coconut date square thingie that looked remarkably like something a small animal could have left on my lawn.

She tasted the eggs and berries and pronounced them: “Mmm!” The cheese and raisins I knew would be a big hit, the date-square turd...not so much.
Still 4/5 ain't bad!

I, myself wasn't quite as good. I'm still weaning myself off of wheat, so for lunch I had one piece of toasted rye bread with the last of my crap peanut-butter and bananas.
But other than that I have been wheat/sugar free! *pats self on back*

So tonight for dinner I was going to make a bolognese spaghetti sauce over my first ever try of spaghetti squash. I was proud, I was ready, I was going to OWN THIS.
At around noon I dug into my freezer to grab my ground beef, except that I couldn't because it wasn't there!

Oh no, you've got to be kidding! I was so sure I had some left!!

But no, there was none to be found.
The obvious answer was to run to the store, but we're what I call a “one-car family” which sounds a hell of a lot better than “we're too poor to have a another car.”

In fact I play that card a lot; the “eco card.”

You think shopping cart pride is bad? Oh, no, no, it gets so much worse.

Yeah I use the “eco card” all the time and it works for so many different situations.

Observe:

“Oh no, we only have one car, because we care about the: environment/carbon footprint/global warming/OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE!!”

“We don't use a dishwasher, I wash everything by hand. We save money that way and I use less water.”

“Oh no, we have a dryer, but who wants to use it? Clothes-line hung clothing smell SOOooo much better, and then we're not absorbing those horrible chemicals from laundry softener!!

See what I mean? It's a multi-use card, it makes you sound so eco-concious that no one figures out you're just too damn poor to buy the second car, dishwasher and dryer (that's constantly breaking).

Protip: Use the “fair-trade sweat shop free” card when you need to defend buying all your clothes second hand. Ain't nobody gonna look at your 3rd hand Silver Jeans with disdain after you tear up about the kids working in sweat shops. **

Where was I? Oh yeah, the dinner that should'a been.

So there I am, beef-less and figuring out what the heck to make for dinner.
I was feeling so proud because I had just put 4 chicken breasts in the oven to bake for 'good protein snacks and lunch.' This chicken was NOT for dinner, and besides, we had chicken yesterday.

Finally my hand rested on a box of hamburgers. We had a tornado / severe thunderstorm warning for our area so I knew BBQing wasn't happening...still it IS what I had on hand..

Long story short, I pan fried the burgers, made mock mashed potatoes with cauliflower and a big ass salad for dinner.
Remi liked it, Ella tried it all, made a face and ate basically the greek yogurt and feta cheese from the salad.

** Disclaimer: I actually do care very much about sweat shops and the abuse of children within. So whenever you CAN afford it, it's worth the extra money to make sure you're not supporting one of these factories!!